Night 1 of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards with Ava DuVernay’s Netflix documentary 13th leading with four wins. Also taking home statuettes — Samantha Bee for outstanding writing for a variety special for her Full Frontal With Samantha Bee Presents Not The White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

RuPaul Charles won his second straight Emmy for outstanding reality program host and Meryl Streep got an outstanding narrator win for Netflix’s Take Five. Oscar winner Streep had previously won two lead actress Emmys, but this was her first win for narrator.

Rex/Shutterstock

Other notables — James Corden accepted the second straight outstanding variety special Emmy win for Carpool Karaoke Primetime Special 2017.Shark Tank snagged the show’s fourth consecutive Emmy for Best Structured Reality Program. In accepting the award, executive producer Clay Newbill said he would “like to encourage all the nominees in the room to continue to produce television that gives people hope, and to do the right thing which his to love one another.”

The TV Academy, for the first time last year, split the awards over two nights. Night 1, with 46 categories, covered animation, documentary, reality and variety programming, while Creative Arts Sunday will present technical and creative achievement categories for scripted programming including comedy, drama and limited series. The entire ceremony will air Saturday, September 16 at 8 PM ET/PT on FXX. The 69th Primetime Emmy Awards will telecast live from the same venue Sunday, September 17 (8 PM ET/5 PM PT) on CBS with Stephen Colbert as host.

Here’s how it all went down:

4:52 PM: Intercom Voiceover Guy in theater says, glamorously, to all the nominees, presenters: “Ladies and gentlemen, 2 minutes to show time. Do not run, but get the hell into the theater.”

And here we go…
5 PM: “Welcome everybody to the second annual TWO-HOUR (emphasis on two-hour) Creative Emmys,” says exec producer Bob Bain. 5:05 PM: Aline Brosh and Rachel Bloom open the show with a musical number. (The song is from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’sFYC Emmy video). “My music videos are not for anyone’s amusement!” Bloom declared to Kimmy Gatewood.

“I don’t care about awards shows!” she sings, “They have nothing to do with awards shows they have nothing to do with art…I’d rather act Checkov!” (With hair-removing cream on her upper lip)

“This is where the real talent is at! Screw you Primetime!” says Rachel.

This is the second year in a row the Late Late Show‘s Carpool Karaoke primetime special has won the category.

Backstage, James Corden was asked why he decided to make Carpool Karaoke a special.”[We] did it last year year which we won for as well so winning last year was sort of the thought process ‘oh we should do it again’.. it was as simple as that,” he said.

“This is exciting!” Samantha Bee said picking up the Best Variety Special Writing Emmy for her Not The White House Correspondents Dinner.”

“Thank you so much to Academy…to these people with me on stage tonight for making me look so good. These are the people who stand in a jet stream of daily obscenities and manage to write jokes about them… I’d like to thank our parents — all of them.”

She also thanked the “amazingly supportive people at TBS and “my husband” for his support and “the wonderful spawn we have created.”

Outstanding Directing For A Variety Special

The Oscars
ABC • The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Glenn Weiss, Directed by

It’s the 12th win for Weiss. “If Rachel Bloom’s still here I do care about awards shows, thank you!” he says.

If you watched the Oscars all the way to the end, something happened that we didn’t plan. You might not be aware of it..We’re on live TV, you can’t call cut, you can’t call it over….the most important thing is hiring the best goddam crew in the business. My hat is off to every single person with headsets in the Dolby theater that night.”

“The situation at the end of the Oscars was something happen that we couldn’t control,” Weiss said when he stepped backstage. We wanted make sure that were showing what we can to be as above board as possible.. it was really important to show everything that was going on to the world”

Superbowl 51 half-time show starring Lady Gaga – it received 6 noms total.
Robert Barnhart: “I want to thank Lady Gaga for not blinking an eye when I asked her to jump off the roof.”

Kristen Schaal and Kenan Thompson introduced Outstanding casting for a reality program

Outstanding Casting For A Reality Program

Born This Way
A&E • Bunim/Murray Productions
Sasha Alpert, CSA, Casting by
Megan Sleeper, Casting by

“This is the first year for this award so thank you…most of all I really want to thank the cast and their families for trusting us to bring this story to television. Could you please all stand? I love you guys.”

Simon Miles: “This is really about all the people who’ve done all 24 seasons of DWTS…it starts at the top and goes all the way down and the people we have to be most thankful for are the carpenters…the people with hammers and saws who make it all come true.”

Picking up her Emmy for Best Informational Series or Special for her A&E Scientology expose, Leah Remini began by saying she wanted to thank her mom, who was in the audience and who Remini said for years had hoped to attend a ceremony at which her daughter won an Emmy.

“Mom, thank you. You are officially forgiven for getting us into a cult.”

5:55 PM: Nearly half-way through the two-hour show…
Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction Or Reality Series

6:57 PM: Bill Nye got a chunk of time – who knows if it will make the cutdown Creative Arts Emmy Awards show to be telecast on FXX – for a Seventh Inning Stretch talk on global warming.

“I sincerely hope that this year becomes the turning point, in that we as a nation begin to address global climate change. Everyone watching: we can do this. We can make the big changes we need. Working together we can – dare I say it – save the world.”

Big applause in the hall.
Outstanding Documentary Or Nonfiction Series

Picking up Emmy for Best Documentary or Non-Fiction Series, Planet Earth II exec producer Mike Gunton said he’d like to thank the actors “even the snakes.”
“This was a love letter to the planet. She is crying at the moment” and needs more love, he said.

Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking

LA 92
National Geographic • Light box
TJ Martin, A Film by
Dan Lindsay, A Film by
Jonathan Chinn, Produced by
Simon Chinn, Produced by

Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance

Family Guy
The Boys In The Band
Fox • 20th Century Fox Television
Seth MacFarlane as Peter Griffin, Stewie Griffin, Brian Griffin, Glenn Quagmire

Shark Tank EP Clay Newbill, picking up the show’s fourth consecutive Emmy for Best Structured Reality Program, said he would “like to encourage all the nominees in the room to continue to produce television that gives people hope, and to do the right thing which his to love one another.”

In accepting the award, W. Kamau Bell thanked Amy Entelis and Jeff Zucker for ordering a “show with a black guy who had a dream.”

Backstage Bell addressed whether he felt at any time that he was in physical danger doing the show. “I’m much more worried about getting a story wrong than I am about physical danger,” he said, “but then I’m not my wife.” (Then he grabbed her hand as they left the stage).

Outstanding Special Class Program

70th Annual Tony Awards
CBS • White Cherry Entertainment

Glenn Weiss, director of the James Corden-hosted Tony Awards, accepting the Emmy quoted one of that night’s more memorable acceptance speeches, “Love is love is love is love is love” adding, “let’s all get it together.”